The Twilight Zone

... so there we are listening to Sally Edwards pep talk. She explained to the newcomers that the only 2 things that will hinder your race are fear and self doubt. None of that among us, right? After leaving the Convention Center we decided to hop in the car and check out the course. This is when the weekend took a turn. Karen and I walked out to the car to rearrange the bikes, and low and behold someone had smashed in the drivers window and stolen my Garmin. Welcome to the "Twilight Zone". We went back into the hotel to let them know what had happened and were told they were not responsible. I told them the minute they took money from us to park in their garage they assumed responsibility. The manager won't be in until Monday. Typical. Would you please call the police, so I can file a report. Desk clerk came back with the message that the police were very busy, could not get there for at least an hour. Please tell me I'm on Candid Camera; no, you have entered the "Twilight Zone".
Well Kris and I walk the 1 block to the Police Station and find no one except us there. Where are the crowds? Uuuugghhh At this point the frustration level is very high and pretty much the rest of the afternoon is shot. Karen is busy trying to find a glass company to fix the window, but it's the weekend in the "Twilight Zone" and nothing is open or no one can help. We hop in the car after trying to get most of the glass slivers out, I'm sure I'll be finding glass for the next year. We take a look at the lake we will be swimming in first. It actually was great. Clean, calm and a nice hard sandy bottom, just how I like it. The run from the lake to the bikes was a little bit of a hike, but certainly doable. Now let check the bike route. At about mile 4 there was a pretty decent hill. In the initiation, they said that only about 200 out of 3000 would make it without having to get off their bikes. After seeing it I wondered who the other 197 would be, because I knew that the 3 of us would make it up and over. We didn't worry about the run course. We had already hit the wall for that day. Now on all my Tri's, I have made it a tradition, that the day before the race I have a nice pasta meal to fuel up. I found out about a great Italian Restaurant called Via. The meal, the company, the atmosphere was the highlight of the day. Now off for a good nights sleep (before the race are you kidding?). The alarms were set for 3:30. When I say alarms, we had a room wake-up call, Kris's cell phone, Karen's watch, and not 1 but 2 room alarm clocks. We were not going to sleep thru this race. Once we were dressed in our swim gear we opened the curtain to the outside world. It was not happy. Lightning, thunder and torrential downpour greeted us. Now we've got to get to the race site without a driver's window. I know earlier I was complaining about a high pitched squeal for 8 hours, now add a plastic bag whipping away to the mix. God grant me the serenity....
We get to the race site and what would normally have been a jam packed parking lot, was empty. The race would go on, but not for some time. We had a decision to make. After sitting in the parking lot for a little over an hour we made "THE ADULT" decision to head home. We all felt that the amount of rain that was still coming down made the course very unsafe. It would have been different if we only had a few hours to drive home. There were so many rational factors that went into our decision. Sometimes it's a drag being an adult. Oh well! There is IronGirl August 24th. If at first you don't succeed, TRI, TRI again.